Postcards for virtually every troopship in the Cruiser and Transport Force were produced by enterprising entrepreneurs in 1919 for returning members of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), plus the warships that were also pressed into service to bring soldiers back to America. USS DeKalb, which brought 8,949 AEF personnel back to America after the Armistice, served as the German auxillary cruiser Prinz Eitel Friedrich, sinking 11 vessels before its crew sought refuge at Norfolk Naval Shipyard in 1915. (Donation of Dr. Mark Kulikowski/ Naval History and Heritage Command image)

One Century Ago: Bringing 'Em Back after "The Navy Put 'Em Across"

via the Hampton Roads Naval Museum web site

Naval historians of the First World War tend to gravitate towards great battles such as Jutland and the ferociously frustrating Dardanelles campaign, but these dramatic naval and littoral actions had nothing to do with the U.S. Navy's most decisive contribution to the war: delivering the two-million-man American Expeditionary Force (AEF) to Europe. By this time one hundred years ago, what was then known as the Great War had been over for months, but many of the American Soldiers and Marines who fought its final, bloody campaigns were still coming home.

Although many different kinds of American surface combatants played important roles in containing the German submarine threat and saving Great Britain from potential starvation, the U.S. Atlantic Fleet's Cruiser and Transport Force, consisting of 45,000 U.S. naval personnel manning 24 cruisers and 42 transport vessels (many of which were German passenger liners confiscated after the American entry into the war) put an entire American army across the Atlantic, a feat inconceivable to European leaders on all sides of the conflict before the Navy actually accomplished it.

Even after American troops irrevocably tipped the balance against Germany and the Central Powers and the war was ostensibly over, the Navy had much more to do. Even battleships and cruisers were pressed into the effort to bring home the Soldiers and Marines as quickly as possible, which stretched into the summer of 1919.

"After the signing of the Armistice," wrote Vice Admiral Albert Gleaves, Cruiser and Transport Force commander, "the United States Transport Fleet expanded still more, and developed into a fleet of 149 ships manned by 4,238 officers and 59,030 men, with the gratifying result that 86.7 per cent[sic] of our overseas army was brought home under the Stars and Stripes."